Salvation: Sinner to Saint, or Dead to Alive?

I was talking with a friend this morning about the relationship between repentance and salvation. For his required ministry for Moody he does street evangelism in downtown Spokane. One day while out talking to people he came across a young man who is homosexual. He indicated that he wanted to be saved and to follow Jesus, but wanted to know if homosexuality was a sin. My friend told him that while it is definitely a sin, people go to hell for rejecting Christ, not for being gay.

The discussion we had was what to do or think or say to someone like that about the relationship between their salvation and their turning from their sin. This is a touchy area. It's not precisely black and white. Do you tell them they must turn from their sin and to Jesus, and that they can't be saved until they commit to give up their old ways...or do you tell them to come to Jesus as they are, and that repentance from their old ways is a process?

After discussing and looking to several biblical texts for answers, we concluded that to answer the question, a bigger question is whether salvation is more about sin or more about life and death. A related question we asked was whether turning from sin and turning to Jesus was one action or two, and which one logically comes first.

To us, it seemed inconceiveable that a person who is dead in their sins could turn from their sin themselves in order to then turn to Jesus for forgiveness. Logically a person dead in their sins can do nothing to affect their state.

One text we looked at was Ezekiel 16. In this passage God describes to Israel what their "salvation" looked like from His perspective. While so much of the time we look at salvation as an issue surrounding sinfulness and depravity being healed or cured by God's declaration of the sinner as justified. But the way God portrays this event had nothing to do with sin. He describes Israel not as sinful and rotten, but as an abandoned infant, cast out into the field and left for dead. The imagery portrays salvation as centering predominantly on life and death, the calling out of death and into life. In this event God speaks to the child, "Live!" and they come to life.

So what do you do with someone who knows they must turn from homosexuality when they become a Christian and struggles with it repetitively after getting saved? Do you tell them faith is a commitment to submit in obedience, or do you tell them their forgiveness is not effective on the basis of the purity of their repentence but on the basis of the purity of Christ, whose blood cleanses them?

Is the Bible Anti-Scientific?

In a debate between atheist Richard Dawkins and Christian mathematician John Lennox, held at Oxford University, Dawkins claimed that the fact that the Bible contains miracles makes the Bible "anti-scientific." Said Dawkins, "I don't think I could do science in world in which I thought that at any time a bit of magic would just show up and throw off all the data." 

In response, John Lennox pointed out that Dawkins' claim is illogical on the grounds that the only way in which you would be able to recognize a miracle is if it occurred within a well-balanced, ordered system that supported science. Without the regularity and order of all that make science possible, something out of the ordinary would never be noticed. A miracle necessitates an ordered system, and the claim of the miraculous first assumes an ordered, scientific system in order to claim that a departure form the normal has occurred. 

Lennox makes a brilliant argument and convincingly demonstrates that the prospect of miracles actually requires science to even be noticed as a miracle. There is also another side to this issue. There is a fundamental presupposition Dawkins is operating from that leads him, and many many others, to the conclusion that miracles discredit the Bible's veracity: anti-supernaturalism. 

Without drawing out a long explanation and definition of anti-supernaturalism (for that, there are a multitude of books on the topic, one of which, "The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell, has a whole chapter on it), I'll cut to the chase. 

If you showed a friend a picture in a book of a zamboni machine and asked him what he thought, and he replied saying," Well that's preposterous! That can't be real." And if you then asked him why and his reply was "Well, because these sorts of machines don't exist!" you would think he was a little off. Yet this is precisely the presuppositional reasoning used by many people who deny the veracity of the biblical accounts of miracles. There are many critical scholars who deny the accounts of miracles or the resurrection on the basis of the fact that "People just don't rise from the dead." Rudolph Bultmann, one of founding scholars of biblical form criticism said that "an historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is uttelry inconceivable." Much of the language used by Bultmann and like scholars uses the phrase "the modern man," referring to the type of people who reject the supernatural elements of the Bible. The rhetoric gives the impression that science has disproven the supernatural. But such an assumption underminds the very definition of "supernatural." 

Pastor and author Tim Keller begins disarming the rejection of the supernatural by very simply saying, "If God exists then miracles have to be possible. Since science can't disprove God, then you have to at least be open to the possibility that miracles are possible." 

But on a more fundamental level, the rejection of the supernatural on scientific grounds is a logical fallacy. The skeptic approaches the subject having already drawn a conclusion before the investigation has begun. In terms of logic, the the major premise is the conclusion:

Premise A. Large, complex machines don't exist

Premise B. A photo of a large, complex machine exists

Conclusion. The photo must be a fraud

Or in terms of biblical supernaturalism: 

Premise A. The supernatural does not occur in real life. 

Premise B. The Bible reports supernatural events. 

Conclusion: The Bible must be a fraud. 

One problem I've noted among some of the more prominent atheists who are at the forefront of the so-called "New Atheism," people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, is that they will take a philsophical (Hitchins) or scientific (Dawins) approach, while leaving the historical out of the question. One of the primary distinctives of Christianity, in comparison to almost all other religions, is (1) that its primary revelation, and method of revelation, is a person, and (2) the fact that the whole of Christian doctrine is rooted in an historical event, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Since most other religions are based, not on historical events, but on philosophical propositions, it seems the best defense for the Resurrection and the veracity of the New Testament should be historical. Whether it can be philosophically argued or not, if history confirms (or at least points toward a confirming consensus) the resurrection, then the resurrrection must be true regardless what science of philosophy says. No one philosophically argues the existence of the Roman Empire because there is sufficient historical evidence that the Roman Empire existed.  

Professor of philosophy and ethics at Liberty University and world-renowned expert on evidence for the Resurrection, Gary Habermas, presents a defense of the Resurrection based on historical facts which are accepted by nearly all critical scholars, many of whom are not believers. 

He begins by presenting some historiographical rules which all historians use to establish reliability of historical documents. He list rules such as the fact that the earlier a manuscript to its original composition the better; the earlier a document was written compared to when the events occured the better, that the higher number of manuscripts the better, etc., He goes to show two interesting conclusions: (1) that the entire life of Christ as the Bible presents it can be pieced together from extra-biblical writings from the first and early second centuries without ever using the Bible (he once gave a demonstration of this from 18 independent historical sources from the same time period or very soon after the close of the New Testament), and (2) that a solid case for the resurrection can be put together without ever using one of the four Gospels. 

Critical scholars, including skeptics and liberals, acknowledge most of the Pauline Epistles as genuinely written by Paul. Typically they will give Paul credit of authorship for 6-8 of them, and of these 6-8 are the big theological letters: Romans, Ephesians, Galatians, I and II Corinthians, etc. I don't have first-hand knowledge of the research Habermas has done, but as a guy who is recognized world-wide as an expert in this area and acknowledged as a good, honest scholar, I generally take his word on the research he's done when he says that virtually no scholar rejects Pauline authorship of these epistles. What's more, most of them recognize their early dating. I Corinthians, for example was written in the early 50's AD, and I Corinthians 3 which contains Paul's record of having received a primitive credal account of the death and resurrection of Jesus from the other Apostles, uses legal terminology for him having received some testimony of fact from them (at least the Greek terminology indicates as much). Another fact that most of these scholars will also acknowledge is that the date of Paul receiving this credal confession from the other Apostles is around 35 AD, virtually zero time gap between the resurrection and Paul's receipt of the confession not long after the time when he claims to have seen the resurrected Jesus himself. There is no other religious text that has this much historically confirmation. 

Habermas generally lists four facts which are almost universally accepted by modern scholarship: (1) Paul wrote I Corinthians 3, (2) Jesus was crucified and dead, (3) the tomb was empty, (4) Paul and the disciples believed to have seen the resurrected Jesus. 

Folowing a televised debate (viewable on Youtube) between Habermas and a leading philosophical atheist, Anthony Flew (who since has become a theist), Flew was asked if he could dispute the New Testament documents, to which he replied that he could not because New Testament was the best historical text in existence. (As a side note, one of the judges of the debate--he won the debate 4 to 5--afterward is quoted as saying that Habermas' arguments had convinced him that he should take the resurrection record more seriously.)

So the claim that the Bible cannot be true because the supernatural occurs in the Bible and supernatural events do not occur in real life, is only valid if it can be proven historically that supernatural events have never occurred (Obviously the view is more flawed than that because it begins with the assumption that God does not exist). But if a document which contains the record of supernatural events can be shown to be historically accurate, then logic must dictate that the resurrection is true. 

For more information: http://db.tt/kqkv6WQK

Forgive who's sin, and heal whose land?

Over the last few years, especially lately with some of the interesting political phenomena which have been happening, I have frequently heard the following quote from 2 Chronicles 7:14 presented as an encouraging call for prayer on the part of American Christians to pray for the nation, drawing on this passage as a promise to heal the land of people who call on God for forgiveness:

“If my people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

I'd like to take a look at this passage in its context beginning a chapter before to see what exactly is being said here. To give a small hint at the conclusion, I'll just mention here thatI've purposely misquoted this verse to accord with the way it is typically remembered.

This statement from God occurred at Solomon's dedication of the temple. At this dedication, beginning at 6:1, Solomon faced the people of Israel and said,

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who spoke with His mouth to my father David and has fulfilled it with His hands, saying, ‘Since the day that I brought My people from the land of Egypt, I did not choose a city out of all the tribes of Israel in which to build a house that My name might be there, nor did I choose any man for a leader over My people Israel; but I have chosen Jerusalem that My name might be there, and I have chosen David to be over My people Israel.’” (2 Chr. 6:4-6)

After bringing up remembrance of the covenant for the people of Israel, Solomon then prays to God:

“Now therefore, O Lord, the God of Israel, keep with Your servant David, my father, that which You have promised him, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your sons take heed to their way, to walk in My law as you have walked before Me.’ “Now therefore, O Lord, the God of Israel, let Your word be confirmed which You have spoken to Your servant David.” (2 Chr. 6:16-17)

Later that day, God appeared to Solomon in response and said the following (emphases mine):

“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

“If,” “if,” “if,” “and,” “then”...this is a very specific, conditional statement that looks to a previous agreement, which is the land blessing/cursing promises of the Mosaic Covenant, the Law of Moses, made between God and His covenant people Israel at Mt. Sinai. From the beginning of Chapter 6 this whole passage has everything to do with the nation Israel. Remembering that Israel and the Church are distinct entities throughout all of Scripture, promises like these do not involve the Church. Although Romans 9-11 describes the Church as the ingrafted branch into "true Israel," all that is being described in those chapters is the fact that all are saved by grace through faith, in the way Abraham was (Gen. 15:6), not that the Church has replaced Israel, becoming the new recipient of Old Testament promises to Israel. Prophecies about Israel have not all been fulfilled, meaning that those land promises are still in effect, and are not being fulfilled in a "spiritual" sense by the Church today. With that in mind, how would this apply to the United States? Are we the chosen nation Israel? How could a conditional promise to Israel be part of America's relationship with God?

I'm not writing this to be a kill-joy or to ruin anyone's day. I'm not even writing to say that God has no positive dealings with the United States. I'm only saying that if we're going to look through Scripture to find encouragement or direction as far as what are spiritual obligation is to our country, we should do so in a way that is truthful and faithful to Scripture, “accurately handling the Word of truth.” We cannot expect God to uphold promises He never made. This is being a false witness of God, making untrue claims about Him...obviously something we should take great care to not do.

Now, this look at 2 Chronicles 6-7 does not in any way negate the forgiving and restorative nature of God's character. This we can in fact take away from this passage as an application for us Gentiles. God brings about affliction or chastisement to those of His followers who are living contrary to His Word in an attempt to restore them to fruitfulness. When God does this to us, and we repent, He forgives and restores us. It's a great encouragement to know we're never too far gone to be restored in God's eyes, although a life of fruitless living results in loss of reward in heaven (1 Cor. 3).

As Americans we have a responsibility to submit to our governing authorities, and to pray for and support our nation, and God surely has a hand in what's going on in all nations of the world, but it is not fair to hold God to a promise He never made to America.